The African Centre for Leadership, Strategy & Development, (Centre LSD) with support from Cordaid has urged the federal government to look into the issues and challenges limiting the progress with the clean-up of the Niger-delta.
According to the Acting Executive Director Centre LSD Mr. Monday Osasah,” the time frame given by the federal government for this project is slacking.”
“The present administration took this project as one of their responsibilities to flag off the cleaning of ogoniland which is one of the high display of political will. We expected the project to have gone faster than where it is presently and that is not to say that the government is not working but to trigger them into further action making sure they put speed into whatever they are doing as far as the clean up and emergency measures is concerned.” He said.
He made this statement at the press briefing/media Launch of Research on the Operationalization of the Emergency Measures and Clean-Up of the Niger-delta recently in Abuja.
He further said the important role engaged by the stakeholders in this project should constantly be over seen by the federal government despite the tight schedule because of the community people, adding that the expectation of the communal on the flag off of the project should have been dealt with but rather running presently on 3years down the line and nothing to show for it.
The Head Environmental and Conservation Centre for Environment, Human Rights and Development (CEHRD) Dr. Kabari Sam said Hydro Carbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP) as the eye of the government in the project should make provision of a short time measure so that people of the community would stop consuming contaminated water and make available portable pipe borne water because the continuation of this acts would bring more diseases, loss of lives and money to the country.
The Environmentalist urged for HYPREP to be independent in order to single handedly take decisions without interference or delay with recourse to the Federal Ministry of Environment.
“We are advocating for that level of Independence so that things can speed up and HYPREP can have a self monitoring, and regulating itself by taking decision if there is a function rather than running to Abuja for decisions. The importance of these emergency measures is why UNEP has emphasized on it and HYPREP is supposed to make sure that the emergency measures are implemented there more on the Clean-Up. So far HYPREP has not carried out the actual assignment and in my opinion it is important for the government to look into it and hasten the Clean-Up.”
